No Rest For the Wicked Tanith Smasher Build

In this No Rest for the Wicked guide, we will be taking a look at a build that you can put together once you’ve reached the end of the early game around level 10–11 and go into the mid-game, which you can build for levels 11–20 and potentially beyond.

This build will use a Two-Handed Great Hammer as the main weapon, and we will be using its powerful attacks to pulverize your enemies in a single hit before they even get the chance to attack you.

The Tanith Smasher build is a mid-game, Faith-based build that will let you knock your enemies off their feet with constant staggering attacks, eventually flattening them.

Gears and Spells

For this build, we will be using the Bud of the Everlasting Tree as our primary weapon.

This is a Two-Handed Great Hammer that requires at least 27 points in Faith to equip and scales with the Faith attribute.

This weapon can be crafted at the workshop once you’ve found its blueprint.

Although where you get this blueprint is completely random, you can find it as a reward from daily bounties and challenges or purchase it from the General Goods store once it shows up.

The Bud of the Everlasting Tree comes with the rune spell Berserk Strike as its first spell.

This attack costs 100 focus points to cast and performs a powerful upward swing that deals devastating damage after a long wind-up of pumping your chest.

This slow wind-up makes the attack hard to use in the heat of combat, especially in situations where you have little or no opening, as you will be easily interrupted.

But when you have staggered the enemy or broken their poise, you can use this attack to take away a huge chunk of their health points—and more often than not, if the enemy’s poise is not already broken, the Berserk Strike will break it easily.

For the second spell, we will be using the Dodge Slamdown spell, which can be extracted from the Bandit Cleaver Great Axe.

This spell costs 50 focus points and performs a quick jumping slam attack that deals a moderate amount of damage. Although this spell is not the most powerful in terms of damage for a two-handed weapon, the fast nature of the attack makes it really useful for some of the heavier weapons like the Bud of the Everlasting Treemaking it a great combo finisher.

We will be slotting in the Spin Crush rune in the third spell slot.

This spell can be obtained by extracting it from the two-handed halberd Regal Cleft.

It costs 100 focus points and attacks in a single swipe in front of you, making it a good option to deal with multiple enemies coming at you. Although not as powerful as Berserk Strike while costing the same amount of focus points, the attack comes out faster, making it viable in more situations.

For the fourth slot, we will be using the Scream spell, which can be purchased from Eleanor’s store after upgrading it.

This is a supportive offensive spell that costs 50 focus points and unleashes a large area-of-effect scream in front of you, blowing away and knocking down every enemy caught in its blast. While this attack may not deal damage, it is very useful for interrupting enemy attacks—especially from more agile enemies.

At this point in the game, it is advisable to have two main weapon slots, allowing the possibility of having eight spells at your disposal instead of just four from a single weapon slot. Ideally, I would recommend having a weapon with the Heal aura spell that allows you to use focus points to heal instead of consuming food.

However, Plague Ichor is an extremely rare resource, and if you’ve already spent it on other upgrades (like inventory management or increasing your Hunger Limit), you can slot the Heal Aura spell into one of the available spell slots without affecting the build’s effectiveness.

Armor Pieces

For the armorwe will be putting together a combination of pieces to get as much defense value as possible without going into the Heavy Weight Class.

This is important, as the Two-Handed Great Hammer already has a slower move set compared to other weapons, and if you’re wearing heavy armor that causes you to heavy roll, you will take a lot more unnecessary hits.

For this build, I used Tanith Harvester’s pieces for all slots.

This armor set is leather, providing good defense at the mid-game level and allowing you to stay out of the Heavy weight class.

Affixes and Enchantments

Although the Bud of the Everlasting Tree is a weapon that doesn’t require rune spells to deal massive damage—it can take out most enemies with regular attacks—it can also deal devastating focus-based damage. Being a heavy weapon, the attacks cost more stamina per strike, and the hammer has a downside of generating less focus per hit.

For the Tanith Smasher buildwe will be prioritizing enchantments that support stamina.

Affixes such as increased stamina regeneration and decreased stamina costs are very helpful as they allow you to land more hits before needing to rest.

Other useful affixes include decreased item weight and increased item loadwhich let us equip heavier armor without entering the Heavy class.

We will avoid affixes that make resource management harder—especially anything that further punishes stamina usage. With its already slow attack speed and long wind-ups, running out of stamina after just one or two swings will make it difficult to survive. Negative affixes such as decreased item load or reduced maximum health should also be avoided, as they reduce your survivability and make mistimed dodges costlier.

Rings

For this build, we’ll be using two ring slots:

• First Ring: Agility Ring – Reduces stamina cost of actions and increases movement speed. This gives a much-needed mobility boost, helping offset the drawbacks of the Two-Handed Great Hammer.

• Second Ring: Feather Ring – Increases equip load by a set percentage, helping you wear heavier armor while keeping your weight class below “Heavy,” indirectly improving your defense.

Another solid option is the Jade Ringwhich lets you regain stamina on dealing damage by a set percentage.

At mid-game, Jade Rings typically grant around 2% stamina on damage dealtwhich helps you attack more before needing to pause for stamina regen.

If you only have one ring slot when putting this build together, I suggest prioritizing the Agility Ringas speed is the main edge of this build.

Gems

The Tanith Smasher build relies heavily on landing your regular attacks, which are already powerful. However, because heavy weapons consume significantly more stamina, we’ll prioritize infusing gems that boost stamina.

• Chipped Emerald – Increases max stamina by 4–15% depending on gear level. Can be infused into both weapons and armor.

• Chipped Spike – Infused into the hammer to increase physical damage from regular attacks.

• Chipped Jade – Prioritized for enchanted armor pieces with only one gem slot, as it boosts stamina recovery—a huge benefit for this build.

If you want more rune spell options, it’s also viable to infuse gems that increase your max focus or focus gain.

Consumables

There are no specific consumables that are essential for this build, but they help ease challenges.

• Stamina and focus potions help with resource management in combat

• Bombs offer a ranged option to take out enemy groups or finish off elites and bosses. However, these are often not necessary.

Stat Allocation

This build is one of many possible options if you’ve been investing heavily in the Faith attribute and can be evolved naturally from an early-game Faith-based build.

Around level 12your stats should ideally look like:

• Health: 15 (150 HP)

• Stamina: 15 (70 SP)

• Focus: 14–15 (170–176 FP)

• Equip Load: ~200

By level 20aim for:

• Health: 18

• Stamina: 23

• Faith: 30

• Focus: 15

• Equip Load: 20

You don’t need to invest in Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence. This keeps your damage high while maintaining decent survivability.

If you’re confident in dodging or parrying, you can shift some points from Health into Faith or Stamina. Since this build doesn’t rely heavily on rune spells, you could also reduce your Focus investment and redistribute the points as you prefer.

Final Thoughts

The “Tanith Smasher” is an offensive, close-ranged, Faith-based build that smashes enemies with raw physical power.

While extremely effective in melee, it can struggle against ranged enemiesespecially in groups. The slow attack speed makes you vulnerable to projectiles, and chasing ranged enemies can be punishing. The build lacks any ranged options unless you carry a bow or secondary weapon with a ranged rune spell.

Another important consideration is stamina management. Since attacks consume more stamina, you can easily run out and find yourself unable to dodge. While the build includes affixes and gems to help, they don’t completely resolve the issue—so you must stay alert and manage your stamina wisely.

That wraps up the guide to the “Tanith Smasher” build for No Rest for the Wickedhelping you go on your smashing way. I hope you find this guide helpful on your journey through the island of Sacra! If you have any tips or questions, feel free to share them in the comments below!